Gaza Strip

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT GAZA STRIP - PAGE 3

On Hamas' first day of full rule in Gaza, crowds looted strongholds of the rival Fatah on Friday -- stripping the home of one of the party's strongmen down to the flower pots -- and militants sent a man plunging to his death from a rooftop. At Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' captured seaside office in Gaza City, a gunman sat down at the Fatah leader's desk, picked up the phone and pretended to call Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "Hello, Rice?" the gunman said. "Here we are in Abu Mazen's office.

The faded "Welcome to Gaza" sign arches over the entrance to a city under siege, a city choking on the debris of 14 weeks of rioting. On Thursday rocks flew from every alleyway. People picked up stones from the main road and threw them with a curse. The same stones had been thrown many times before. For two nights the Gaza Strip has been under a 10 p.m.-to-3 a.m. curfew. For two days, its people have bombarded Israeli soldiers and vehicles with stones and whatever else comes to hand.

Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip shot dead at least one Palestinian and wounded at least seven others Tuesday as a new wave of violent Arab demonstrations appeared to be building in defiance of increased Israeli troop strength, deportation orders and massive arrests in the occupied territories. Tuesday's violence and casualties, the worst in a single day after a week-long lull in rioting that has now left at least 24 Palestinians dead, seemed to suggest that the Palestinian youths at the center of the nearly month-long uprising no longer fear arrest, imprisonment or even death, analysts said.

After a rare rebuke from the United States, the Israeli army withdrew late Tuesday from a piece of Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip it had reoccupied and threatened to hold for "days, weeks, months." Israeli tanks and bulldozers rumbled into the Gaza Strip overnight Monday and the tanks, joined by helicopters and naval vessels, shelled Palestinian police positions. The incursion was in retaliation for mortar attacks against an Israeli town near the rural home of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

As the death toll from a controversial missile strike rose to 16, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ignored international ire Tuesday and vowed more such attacks in the Gaza Strip, a stronghold of the Islamic militant group Hamas. Sharon called the operation a success a day after the raid commander, Brig. Gen. Israel Ziv, acknowledged that no Hamas militants were harmed or captured and that Israeli soldiers had fought for hours to uncover two small workshops, not the arms factories that the army had hoped to find.

Four Palestinian men convicted of murder were executed Sunday in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Interior Ministry said. It was the first time in about three years that the death penalty has been carried out by the Palestinian Authority, which said it was trying to restore order in the territories under its control. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has been increasingly concerned with domestic security in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He is under pressure to maintain a truce before Israel's withdrawal from settlements in the Gaza Strip this summer and to unify Palestinian factions, including the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad under one government and one law.

Israel's military on Sunday lifted a weeklong curfew that confined 600,000 Palestinians to their homes in the Gaza Strip, ending one of the longest restrictions imposed in the 18-month Arab uprising. A curfew remained in effect on the 53,000 Palestinians in Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp because of clashes there Saturday with Israeli troops. A Palestinian injured in the fighting, 15-year-old Mohammed Said Shawish, died Sunday of a gunshot wound in the head. His death raised to 515 the number of Palestinians who have been killed since the Arab uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began in late 1987.

Israeli bulldozers destroyed at least two buildings in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, despite U.S. concerns that a recent spate of house demolitions could fuel the conflict with the Palestinians. Palestinian witnesses said the bulldozers razed three large houses in the Rafah refugee camp near the Israeli-controlled border with Egypt. They said soldiers threw smoke bombs and fired into the air to disperse a group of international protesters who tried to block the bulldozers.

Israeli soldiers killed an Egyptian man in the Gaza Strip on Monday in a disputed shooting, as Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, ended. Israel has tightened security in Palestinian areas during the holiday for fear of attacks. The shooting happened at an intersection on the main north-south road through the Gaza Strip, near the Jewish settlement of Gush Katif. There were conflicting reports about how it took place. Witnesses said the unarmed man, identified as Abdelfatah Abudo, was shot after he confronted the soldiers who told him to get out of a taxi.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon traveled Friday to the Gaza Strip to visit with Israeli troops in the volatile region, while Israeli forces and Palestinians clashed in a nearby part of Gaza. Sharon took a quick military tour of Gush Katif, a collection of Jewish settlements in the southern Gaza Strip, his office said. The settlements have come under frequent attack by Palestinian gunmen and from militants firing mortars. Meanwhile, shooting erupted in nearby Rafah, a Palestinian town in the southern end of Gaza along the border with Egypt.